Hudson River School Artists in the Gilcrease Collection

Beginning in the rolling hills, green valleys, and towering forests of upstate New York, the Hudson River school painters captured the distinct American landscape. The first major artistic fraternity in the United States, the Hudson River school became one of the most influential movements in American art. In the early 19th century, American Transcendentalist writers inspired a new appreciation for the beauty of wild, untamed land. In 1825, painter Thomas Cole produced a series of images of the Catskill Mountains, celebrating the dramatic scenery of upstate New York and starting a new approach to American landscape painting. By the mid-19th century, the Hudson River school painters expanded their search for new subject matter to South America, the Arctic, and the American West, celebrating the grandeur and vastness of the American landscape.